When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last
year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government
also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York
Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret
censorship lists of Thailand's military Junta, no-one was too
surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths
to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the
home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which
states "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press", the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:

Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
any other website or server other than a blank park page,
until further order of this Court.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July
2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there
were "serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems
of the Cayman Islands", "Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for
the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held
by financial institutions regarding their client's identity", "Failure
of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious
transactions is not subject to penalty" and that "These deficiencies,
among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the
Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The 'FATF') as
non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering". As of 2006
the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money
laundering "Countries of Primary Concern".

The Cayman's case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled
bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over
$4,500,000,000's worth of money laundering including by the former
president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_Moi
which became the Guardian's front page story in September 2007 and
swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election
and http://wikileaks.org/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported
in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High
Court Case in Kenya).

To find an injunction similar to the Cayman's case, we need to go
back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published
excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and found
itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the
equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and
its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found
the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.

The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint
and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday
afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee
and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer
lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or
representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several
Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior
to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust
structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by
offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman
Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks
servers which are based in several countries, the order was served
on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the 'Wikileaks.org' name through -- California registrar Dynadot, who then
used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for 'Wikileaks.org'.
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order
from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup
sites such as wikileaks.fi (Finnland) and wikileaks.de (Germany)
which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using
the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of
all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of
suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication
of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with
a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior
to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation
California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a
personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank's lawyers without a
single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only
preliminary.